


A slow boat passing on a dark river

by shopfront



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Fallen London Fusion, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Escape, Extra Trick, F/F, Fist Fights, Getting Together, Kissing, Post-Season/Series 03, Tetch Virus, ToT: Monster Mash, Trick or Treat: Chocolate Box, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-23 04:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12498972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/pseuds/shopfront
Summary: Lee realises Jim can't be trusted to let her enjoy her new existence, and finds a new way out of Gotham. By going down.





	A slow boat passing on a dark river

**Author's Note:**

  * For [May](https://archiveofourown.org/users/May/gifts).



> Canon Divergence: Tabitha escaped her family by fleeing to Fallen London a long time ago, and now virus!Lee is unknowingly following in her footsteps post-Season 3. Title is a modified quote from Fallen London.

At first Lee couldn’t contain her glee at slipping away undetected. When in doubt don’t head out, head down. Especially when earnest cops would be watching all the routes out, anyway. It had stung a little to begin with to know that she was leaving Jim behind. But the further down she went and the more she felt the cool dampness of the underground air prickle across her skin, the more that feeling receded.

 Just a lingering side effect of being human. Now she had become something better.

But as she stood on a dock waiting for a boat the glee started to fade. Lee tapped her fingers against her arm and glared into the gloom. She’d paid Barbara handsomely in freshly robbed cash for this location, not to mention the promise of leaving Jim entirely to her tender mercies in the future. If it was wrong, or a trick….

But just as she started to really nurture her rage, a searchlight cut through the fog and she smiled once more.

At last. 

The steam ship pulled slowly up to the dock, pushing through the fog and replacing it with a billowing cloud of steam. As it pulled alongside and the crew began working to anchor it, Lee heard a clear clatter of stones and footsteps and turned. She half expected Jim Gordon to loom out of the darkness behind her, and felt both adrenaline and delight surge at the thought of a fight. But it was only a few strange and misshapen creatures, lead by a handful of young women laced into skirts that billowed almost as much as the steam cloud did.

Lee turned back to the boat with a smile and watched as a walking plank was thunked down. She had very little luggage and no decent coat, nothing like those before and behind her wore. But the Tetch virus kept her warm, and she was heading for somewhere nobody in Gotham would ever find her. Somewhere nobody would ever ruin her life again.

Things were definitely looking up.

*

“I’m looking for the Galavan school,” Lee said, rolling her eyes and examining her nails when the other person leered at her. 

“Who’s asking?” the unfortunate stranger asked, right before Lee sent him flying across the road and into a stall.

“What about you?” Lee asked a woman trying to duck past her in the busy street, but she just shook her head and pulled her cloak tighter before hurrying on. Lee sighed. “What does a girl have to do to get a question answered in this place?”

A small figure stuck their head out into the street and gestured wildly at Lee. Huffing, Lee walked over. She pushed the same man back down onto the pavement hard as he started to struggle out of the remains of the stall, and then made an impatient gesture to the child.

“What?”

“The constables are coming,” they said, pushing back a hood to reveal two long dirty braids and a nervous expression.

“So?” Lee asked. “I can take them. That’s what you hired me for, remember?”

The girl reached out and grabbed Lee by the hand. “You promised you wouldn’t keep drawing attention,” she pleaded. “Please. If I bring the constables down on the Headmistress, the other urchins told me she’d never take me in.”

“Fine,” Lee said and let herself be dragged along. “Lead me somewhere new and I’ll start over.”

*

"Urgh, remind me again why I’m helping you?” Lee complained the next morning after they’d worked their way through five distinctly different areas and fled the constables in each.

“Because I had gold and information you needed.”

“If we don’t find something soon, Agatha,” said Lee with her lips pursed. “I may just stop caring.”

“But you said you wanted to meet the lady who runs the school,” the girl said, tugging on her sleeve. “Remember? The lady who came from the surface and travelled across the Unterzee on a steamer just like you did.”

“Right,” Lee said distantly, watching the crowd pass them by. "I did, didn't I."

*

The woman who answered the door had a fierce glare on her face. “What?”

Lee looked down at Agatha, but she just sidled behind Lee’s legs. Shrugging expansively, she turned back to the woman. “This rugrat paid me to find you. This _is_ the Galavan school of whatever, right?”

The woman continued glaring for a moment and then shifted her gaze to Abigail, who squeaked. 

“You have a name?” she asked, bending down. Abigail nodded and gave it, and one side of the woman’s mouth quirked up. “My name’s Tabitha, Agatha. Why don’t you come on in? There’s stairs just down the hall there, if you follow them up one of the others will show you where to go.”

Lee leaned in towards Tabitha, propped on one hand against the doorframe as she watched Agatha run past them. “You often take in kids without asking where they came from?” she asked idly.

Tabitha just grabbed her by the arm that was propping her up and yanked her inside. Lee yelped as she stumbled, then laughed. 

“If you wanted to get grabby, you just had to ask,” she said, reaching for Tabitha only to be pushed further inside the house. “What’s the hurry?”

“I’m expecting company,” Tabitha said, steering her into place just beyond the entrance into the next room. “Do you know how to fight?” she asked, examining Lee critically. Lee just smirked and nodded, and joined Tabitha in surveying herself. 

She hadn’t changed all that much since leaving Gotham. She still wore pants, eschewing the complicated looking skirts and bustles she saw around most corners now. Though she had decided early on to adopt the complicated hairstyles. Getting her hair off her neck was a bonus in all the dampness and fog, and it helped certain eyes to slide right off her in a crowd. Coal dark makeup suitable for use as eyeliner had also proved rather easier to get her hands on than Lee had expected when she’d realised she had traded Gotham for life in a Victorian throwback to secure her freedom.

All in all, she didn’t think she looked too different. In fact, she thought she looked damned good.

“You’ll do, I suppose,” Tabitha said and then impatiently shoved a wicked looking dagger into Lee’s hands when she preened.

They were still standing behind either side of the doorframe, weapons in hand, when the front door crashed open. Lee chuckled with delight at the sound, and Tabitha threw her a skeptical side glance.

“Something funny?” she asked, though her attention remained mostly fixed on the intruders.

Lee’s grin widened. “I’m just enjoying myself,” she said, eyes trailing down Tabitha’s body as she twirled the knife thoughtfully in her hand.

Tabitha raised an eyebrow, her eyes still fixed on the doorway they were framing. “Is now really the time?” There was another crash from the next room, and then an inarticulate roar that made Tabitha grit her teeth and adjust her grip on her whip.

“I learnt some time ago not to deny myself the things that I want. Things that I need,” she said, biting her lower lip. “Things that I… desire.” Tabitha didn’t bother to respond, but the roaring and crashing was beginning to ease off in favour of the sound of rummaging. “Who are these guys, anyway?”

“Jasper and Frank. They’re Unfinished Men for hire, which means they’re strong and- hey!”

Before she could finish, Lee pushed off from the wall with a shrug. The doorway framed her nicely as she posed there for a moment until they finally caught on that they weren’t alone. “I’m strong, too,” she said to Tabitha with a wink, and then she threw aside the knife and dove forward to meet one of the Unfinished Men head on with her fists raised.

Tabitha followed her with a battle cry. Distantly Lee noted the few remaining intact objects getting roped and yanked down on the other clay man’s head, but most of her attention was focused on her own opponent. He moved slow. Kinda reminded her of Butch, frankly, and in the absence of Barbara’s dear frenemy henchman she was more than happy to imagine pounding on his face instead. Hell, with the virus in her blood she was just about crazy enough to actually see him as she did.

Lee laughed manically. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tabitha shoot her a vaguely alarmed look. Pausing, she did a quick inventory of the clay man’s injuries and remaining solid parts, and then put her heeled boot straight through one of his knees.

He yelled, and the sound distracted his friend long enough for Tabitha to also bring him down with a resounding final crash.

“Well,” Lee said, dusting her hands off and placing them on her hips. “I think that went well, how about you?”

Tabitha just stared at her for a moment. “It’ll do,” she said, and pointedly looking around them at the destroyed room before she grimaced. “Help me drag them outside. They’ll send a better message from the sidewalk.”

“My pleasure,” Lee drawled throatily. She smirked when Tabitha shot her another sharp glance before getting back to work.

*

“So this is, what, a finishing school?” Lee asked derisively some time later once the worst of the debris had been cleared and children had begun to creep out of nooks and crannies all over the house.

Tabitha snorted. “Hardly,” she said. Lee cocked a eyebrow at her and she huffed a sigh before continuing. “I teach them to fend for themselves,” she said. “Agatha told me how long she’s been with you. Long enough for you to realise kids don’t always have it easy down here, I bet.”

“I might be crazy,” Lee murmured as she righted another set of candle sticks. “But I’m not heartless.”

“You are strong, though.” 

When Lee turned towards her with delight in her eyes, she found Tabitha lounging on a chaise and watching her. “I am,” she agreed, dropping the broken candle she’d been examining to walk over and step between Tabitha’s legs. “Would you like to know how strong?”

Tabitha opened her mouth, but before she could say anything Lee stopped her words with a finger against her lips. Then she leant in and met Tabitha in a long, slow but relatively chaste kiss. There was a clang behind them, and the sound of giggling and small feet vacating the room, and Tabitha smiled against Lee's mouth.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said huskily, having pulled only scant centimetres away. Then she drew Lee back in and deepened the kiss before she could answer.

“I gave myself a virus,” Lee said breathlessly some time later when they came back up for air.

Tabitha went still in her arms, and then pulled back. “That sounds ominous,” she said, eyes narrowing when Lee just smirked. “Is it contagious?”

“Mmm, most probably,” Lee said, leaning in again. Tabitha slipped free from her grip though, and Lee pouted. “You can’t catch it from kissing me.”

Tabitha just made a thoughtful noise.

“If you’re planning to stick around, then I probably have a few favours I could call in to make sure that stays… contained.”

Lee smirked. “If that’s what it takes to get you to kiss me like that again, then how soon can we leave?”

Tabitha didn’t answer. But she did smile as she turned back to the room and called for the kids to come back in and get back to work. Lee watched them, smirking as she saw one of the littlest ones pocket something when Tabitha wasn’t looking.

A school for budding criminals wasn’t exactly what she had in mind when she gave Jim the slip. But it might do the trick.


End file.
